The Gordon Place

by Isaac Thorne

  Graham wiped at Lee’s eyes, feeling like that was only making things worse. Star had picked up the pay phone receiver. He could see that much. Mucus still running from his eyes, nose, and mouth, Graham saw himself as Lee lunging for her, knocking the pepper spray loose from her left hand, yanking her away from the pay phone by her purse. He tried to hold himself back, at the very least soften the blows his father was landing on this poor woman. But he was powerless because this was memory, not the real world. Graham felt Lee hitting her with a closed fist, a right against her temple and a left against the bridge of her nose. He saw her body collapse and go limp beneath him, saw himself pick up her body and throw it over his shoulder like Charles Laughton as Quasimodo in that old black-and-white movie he’d seen in late-night runs on television as a kid: The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He saw himself throwing this rag-doll version of Star the stripper into the shotgun side of his pickup, saw himself starting the engine and speeding off into the night.

  The bubble squeezed him and the scene dissipated again, reforming. It was daylight outside. There was no strip club and no Star now. There was instead a black woman. Graham recognized her, he thought. She was standing in the hallway in front of the principal’s office at his elementary school. He was standing there with her, still dressed in the carbon plant clothes. Lee had had to leave work early because something had happened at school, something involving Graham, something the black woman was angry about. She was screaming at Lee Gordon. Pointing at him. Accusing him of something. He watched her lips move but was unable to decipher (or remember) what she was saying. Graham felt his father’s gaze drift downward, to the front of her blouse. Lee was thinking that it was possible that she was not wearing a bra. Graham tried to force his head and eyes up, but was again unable to change his father’s memory. He saw the woman turn on her heels and storm away from him, leaving him standing there in front of the principal’s office. He felt his father’s arousal and predatory instincts as they eyed her figure from the back, her lovely hourglass shape and the sexy sway of her hips. Lee Gordon had never had a black woman before, and in life would never dare admit to anyone about having thought about it. Graham could not unsee his father’s wonder about what it might be like to fuck her. She had fight in her. Would she fight a fuck? Star the stripper hadn’t fought three years before, but she had been unconscious at the time.

  Oh my God. Graham struggled to break free of these thoughts, squeezing his metaphysical eyes shut against them, trying in vain to place metaphysical hands over metaphysical ears. It was no use.

  Star had also died unconscious because Lee couldn’t risk having her identify him and thus destroy his life. The black woman wasn’t carrying a purse and was unlikely to be packing heat anywhere else. He could try to take her on her way to the parking lot right now.

  Except.

  Except that she had gotten his stupid sissy brat of a kid in trouble with the school, which is why he’d had to leave work early and subtract several hours from his shift that day. And the dumbass kid had somehow made it his fault. Suddenly Graham’s own recollections of this day came flooding back to him.

  I remember that! Graham shrieked, although no words escaped the lips of this memory of Lee Gordon’s he was living. I remember that day. I was little. I told you that I thought a girl in my class was pretty. Her name was Afia. You said you knew her. You said black girls couldn’t be beautiful because black girls had tails that were leftovers from their evolution. You made a fool out of me because I repeated what you said and the other kids laughed at me and goaded me into trying to pull the back of her pants down to check. I snuck up behind her at the see-saws and grabbed at the back of her pants. I didn’t manage to pull them down, but that didn’t matter. It was enough that I had grabbed at her waistband. She slapped me across the jaw and yelled at me for it, and she should have. I remember her screaming PURRRVUURRRRT at me on the playground, loud enough for the whole school to hear while the other kids just stood around the see-saw laughing at me. You fucking asshole. You miserable, hateful, murdering low-life son of a bitch asshole.

  From Graham’s throat in the physical world, Lee Gordon laughed out loud. “Yeah. You always were a gullible little shit.”

  Grace Afton, mother to little eight-year-old Afia who did not have a tail, stalked away from Lee Gordon, the abusive husband of Anna Johnson Gordon and hateful father to Graham. Lee Gordon considered following her, getting what he wanted from her. But he did not follow her, at least not then. He liked a fight, but he didn’t have the energy for it that day. Besides, he might accidentally get her pregnant and have to deal with that shit. Instead, he would take Graham home with a promise to the principal that he would apologize to Afia and never do anything like that again.

  The scene fell apart and reformed. Graham as Lee Gordon was crouched among the shrubbery at the end of the semicircle in front of Graham’s elementary school, watching all the mothers and some of the fathers drop their kids off for the day. In his right hand he held what had once been his father’s hunting knife. There was no crossing guard here, no blinking speed limit warning lights to draw attention to the fact that it was a school zone. It was just an ordinary school morning in a tiny town and, as luck would have it, little Miss Afia Afton was the last to arrive at school that day. Lee watched her climb out of the backseat of her mother’s third generation Mercury Cougar. He watched her mom call out to her as she bolted for the doors, and then watched her turn back to blow the older woman a kiss. Grace Afton caught the smooch in her right hand and planted it on her cheek, then waggled her fingers in that “have a good day, sweetie” gesture that all mothers seem to become afflicted with once they’ve sent their first off to school. Graham thought it was sweet of them. But their happy, nonchalant expressions of unconditional love to each other in the face of what had happened the day before enraged Lee Gordon anew. What right did they have to carry on with their lives as if everything was normal?

  After the school door had closed behind the little black girl, Grace Afton swung the Cougar through the rest of the semi-circle and brought it to a halt at the stop sign, looking right first, then left before attempting to turn. It was then that Lee Gordon leaped from the bushes beside the car, threw open the Cougar’s passenger side door, and hopped in. Grace Afton screamed, let go of the steering wheel, and started trying to shove the burly man out of her car. Graham tried desperately to relax Lee’s body, to allow her to push him out of the car so she could put the pedal to the metal and save herself. Instead, this memory version of Lee pushed the point of the hunting knife he was carrying into her ribs and demanded that she quiet down. He had seen Sylvester Stallone use that technique on a soldier when he’d taken Graham’s mother to see First Blood. Lee informed the black woman that she was going to drive them somewhere so they could talk about what had occurred between them in front of the principal’s office.

  Another scene. Grace Afton was lying on the ground in the woods somewhere between her house and the Gordon place. They’d left the Cougar in her own driveway. She was bleeding from the slash across her throat, as well as from a more significant, more ragged wound on the left side of her skull. She did not move. She did not breathe. Graham watched himself as Lee picking up her body, dangling it lifeless in the crook of his elbows and across his forearms, and carrying it toward home.

  From within his throat, Lee Gordon could feel a lump rising. He swallowed it down and smiled at the sorrow he could sense radiating from Graham’s presence within his little prison of consciousness. YEAH, he said. YEAH. I HAD TO KILL HER BECAUSE OF YOU, YOU LITTLE SHIT. I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE THE BLACK GIRLS ALONE, DIDN’T I? BUT THAT AIN’T ALL I DID. YOU AIN’T EVEN HEARD THE HALF OF IT YET, BOY. HAVEN’T YOU WONDERED ALL THESE YEARS WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR MOTHER?

  No. Leave me alone.

  YOU HAVE.

  You told me she ran off with a black man.

  Laughter. YEAH. YEAH, I DID SAY THAT. WHAT I PROBABLY SHOULD HAVE SAID IS THAT I KILLED HER TOO BECAUSE OF WHAT YOU
DID TO THE LITTLE BLACK GIRL.

  You. You what? You...

  I KILLED YOUR MOTHER YOU LITTLE BRAT. I KILLED HER. I CUT HER. I CHOPPED HER AND THE OTHER WOMAN INTO PIECES AND SHOVED BOTH OF THEM INTO THE CRAWL SPACE HERE. DO YOU GET IT NOW? I KILLED HER. I KILLED THEM BOTH.

  But...why? Why? Why? Why?

  Suddenly Graham was back in the cellar. He tried to look around himself and was briefly confused when his head didn’t seem to work. Then he realized that the lights were on and the cellar was stacked floor to ceiling with dry goods and other items. He was still in his father’s memories. Sweat ran from the top of his head and dripped off his nose as he tossed what looked like a black woman’s arm into the portal in the cellar’s cinder block wall that leads to the crawl space. Beside him sat an old ax that he had been using to chop the body of Grace Afton into smaller chunks. He hefted the ax over his head and brought it down on her remaining intact shoulder. It sliced most of the way through but became stuck in the last few cords of flesh. Lee Gordon was tired, low on energy, and the Afton woman had tight, tough muscles and tendons. He dropped the ax and grabbed the corpse’s wrist, yanking it upward. He began to twist the arm on its remaining threads of flesh, intending to rip it off if he could not cut it. Then, from somewhere above all this, he heard the sound of the cellar door open followed by the thunk of sneakers coming down the stairs. Anna had come home early from wherever it was that she went during the days when he was at work (she didn’t have a job, but she was indeed able to spend money like she had one). She had seen his pickup in the driveway. She was looking for him.

  There was no time, Graham heard memory Lee thinking. No time to throw the rest of Grace Afton’s mangled body into the crawl space and reset the portal door. No time to develop an excuse for the blood-soaked ax that sat propped against the cinder block wall beside him. No time to explain the sweat on his face and the crimson stains on his hands. There was only one thing he could do when his wife of ten years stepped onto the cellar floor, turned her head to look for him, and had time to register what was happening.

  Mom! Graham tried to shout. Don’t come down! Don’t come down here! Call the police! Run! Run! RUN!

  She could not hear him.

  Lee Gordon snatched up his ax. Graham could feel the cords in his old man’s neck standing out, could feel the muscles in his arms trembling with effort. He stood behind the staircase, between the back of it and the cinder block wall with the portal in it, out of sight of anyone descending. He held the tool in a batter’s stance as if it were the bottom of the Ninth inning and Casey, Mighty Casey, was on the verge of striking out. When Anna Johnson Gordon strode off the last step of the staircase, he snuck up behind her and swung the ax with all the might he had left to muster from within his aching arms. The dripping blade connected with the back of Anna’s neck and lodged there, just shy of severing her spinal cord. Her head lolled forward on her neck, then her body tumbled along with it, crashing onto the cellar floor in a fashion similar to the way her son Graham would land there years later.

  Lee stamped one foot on his wife’s back and yanked the blade free. In the present, the consciousness of Lee’s son Graham wailed over the sight. Had he physical tears to shed, they would have been running down his face in torrents. Lee walked around her, noting that her head was tilted so that the left side of her face was visible to him. Her nose was pressed firmly against the ground, which forced the flesh at the tip of it upward in a way that reminded both men of Janet Leigh’s death scene in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Graham heard Lee thinking that he should have installed a drain down here to catch the blood. Like in the movie.

  Again he heaved the ax above his head with both hands and brought it down against Anna’s neck with every Newton of force he could summon from his arms, his shoulders, and his back, all of which were now screaming at the strain he demanded from them. This time, his wife’s head came off clean, rolling on the tip of her nose so that it came to rest about a half inch away from the rest of her. Lee Gordon threw down the ax, exhausted.

  No. No. No. No no no no no no.

  The anguish that welled up inside his head from the brat Graham was powerful, probably more powerful than anything else he’d experienced after he had taken control of Graham’s body. SHUT UP, KID.

  No. No. No.

  YES. YES. YES! I SAID SHUT UP!

  ***

  Lee thrust open the eyes in his son’s head, allowing the pool of illumination from the Maglite, the light of the present time, to fill his vision. He felt his son’s sorrow swell and then recede again as Lee forced the body’s other occupant down once more into the stream of consciousness they shared. It was like drowning an already dead rat in a bucket of water. There was no struggle. Graham simply went under. That was fine with Lee. He had better things to do now. Chief among them was getting his formerly dead redneck ass out of that cellar and into his brand new world, free of all the baggage he’d just relived from his previous life.

  Then, from somewhere above the cellar, Lee Gordon thought he heard the sound of footsteps, tenuous double-clacking footsteps like the ones made by slick urban cowboy boots or women’s shoes: heel, outsole, heel, outsole, thik, thunk, thik, thunk. Whoever was up there was moving cautiously throughout the living area. Seconds later, he heard a querulous voice with a lilting Georgian accent calling his son’s name.

  “Hellooo?” The call was muffled by the ceiling and walls above him, but it was most definitely coming from inside the house. Lee Gordon smiled at the mental horror movie reference he’d just made, something younger folks would never get, he thought. He’d have to be careful about things like that if he was going to live out the rest of his son’s days for him. Maybe once this was all over, he’d go to that Blockbuster Video over in Hollow River and figure out what the kids were watching these days. It might help him fit in again. “Hello? Graham? It’s Patsy. Hello?”

  He had to hurry. If Patsy, whoever she was—Lee couldn’t place her right now because he’d shoved his son’s memories back down into that stream of consciousness along with him—happened to check the cellar, she’d first discover the broken staircase. If she didn’t fall off it herself in the darkness, she might suspect that Graham had fallen and call for help. He could call for her help himself, as a matter of fact, let her know he was down here. Then she might be able to get someone with a ladder for him, and he’d have the convenient but entirely truthful excuse for why his face was so beaten up. That would also save him from having to kick out the escape door he’d built at the other side of the crawl space. It would ensure that all those bones he’d stowed away in there remained undisturbed.

  Lee stood up from his place against the cinder block cellar wall, tossed the empty beer bottle back into the void from whence it came, and dusted off his hands. He crouched in front of the makeshift door, grabbed it at the bottom, and slid it upward against the wall with all the strength that was left in his legs. He pressed against the bottom of the structure with his knees until he’d reached a height above them. Just when the strain on his calves, thighs, arms, and back was becoming too much, he felt the edge of the door penetrate the air of the open portal. Above him, the thik, thunk, thik, thunk of Patsy’s shoes sounded like it might be getting closer. He wondered if she had gone upstairs yet, to the second floor. If she hadn’t, maybe she would before she thought to check the cellar. Maybe. Even with that thought for comfort, Lee felt the urgency to rush welling inside him.

  He slid his hands along the sides of the doorway and tilted the structure into place until the entire thing came to rest atop the eighth row of cinder block that formed the lower frame of the portal. The sound of Patsy’s footsteps approached the cellar door. “Hello? Graham? Are you here? It’s Patsy.”

  Lee snapped up the Maglite from the floor, strode a couple of paces back from the wall, and scanned his handiwork. The door was in place, but it wasn’t entirely flush with the wall surrounding it. In the old days, he could have taken his time with it, made sure it loo
ked like part of the wall before climbing the stairs back to the living area. He’d gotten so good at it, that most times he didn’t have to do more than give the door a good tap on each side to line everything up. The lip of the door protruding over the edge of the portal frame was much too obvious this time. He might need to try a few times to get it to line up. This Patsy lady and the pressure she was putting on him had screwed up his method, his mojo. If he overshot while trying to fix it, it would be her fault. He’d probably have to make her pay for it. Somehow. Especially if it meant losing his secret.

  The cellar door creaked open, flooding what was left of the broken staircase with light from the hallway. From Lee Gordon’s position beneath it, it looked like white light. Morning light.

  “Hellooooo?” Patsy called from the top of the staircase. “Graham? Are you down th—”

  There was a moment of indecision. Should he remain silent and wait for her to either leave or attempt to scale the broken staircase? Or should he call out to her and risk the discovery of his secret doorway? For a split-second, it looked like the nosey bitch was going to just close the cellar door and go on about her business. Then, as the light from above began to wane back into darkness, he felt a voice bubbling up from the stream of consciousness. It forced its way from the lungs in his son’s body, up the windpipe, over the vocal cords, and out the mouth before Lee could do anything to stop it.